Search

Syndicate

Statistics

Sunday, April 30, 2006

RESCUE LATEST

It may still be two days before miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb are brought to the surface; maybe less. Mining expert Amal Battacharya:

When they excavate, they’ve got to support the rock as they go along, otherwise other people will be in danger. So they are driving in a new tunnel hopefully, in somewhat, shall we say, stable rock.

And these 12 metres that they’re getting into, I don’t know again what is the situation there, but they’re getting probably to the zone of broken rock, and they’ll have to take extreme care so that other tonnes of rocks don’t come down on the other people.

By Battacharya’s estimate, those final tricky metres could be covered within 24 hours. Meanwhile, Kim Beazley is scoring political points. For shame! Have you no decency sir? Etc.

UPDATE. Naomi, one of the vertical carp over at Mark Bahnisch’s learning-to-write collective, blames company orders:

… this miracle can’t distract us from the reality of this disaster. These men were going about their daily work, under orders from a company that was pushing the geological envelope to make a buck.

TO USE THE WORDS OF NADINE STROSSER ...

America’s hardboiled newsmen can’t get enough of the Thomas Jefferbunk. The Berkshire Eagle used it as the headline for last year’s Fourth of July editorial. Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press thundered: “We need to stop slicing this country in half, and saying those who support this act or this politician are ‘good’ Americans, and the rest are not. Sometimes ‘dissent is the highest form of patriotism.’ I didn’t make that up. Thomas Jefferson did."

Er, no. You made up that he made it up. But former Georgia state Rep. Mike Snow uses it, and Miranda Yaver of Berkeley wore it on a button to the big anti-war demo in Washington last year, and Ted Kennedy deployed it as the stirring finale to his anti-Bush speech:

"It is not unpatriotic to tell the truth to the American people about the war in Iraq. In this grave moment of our country, to use the words of Thomas Jefferson, ‘Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.’ “

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

The blunder is probably the fault of the American contractor hired to transport the casket from Kuwait to Australia, a firm named Kenyon International.

Here the plot thickens. Kenyon’s parent company, Service Corporation International (SCI), boasts that it is “the dominant leader in the North American death care industry”. It is based in Houston, Texas. You will not be surprised, therefore, to hear that SCI’s billionaire founder, one Robert Waltrip, is an old buddy of the Bush family and a big-money donor to the two Georges.

Back in 1999, when George jnr was beginning his run for the White House, SCI was embroiled in a grisly scandal known as Funeralgate. A whistleblower accused the company of “recycling” graves. Old corpses had been removed and replaced by new ones. At two Jewish cemeteries in Florida, bodies were exhumed and dumped in the woods to be eaten by wild hogs.

I am not making this up. The scandal ran through the Texas courts, reaching all the way to, yep, Governor George W. Bush. There were uncomfortable questions about the donations he had accepted from SCI.

Happily, the whistleblower was paid off and everything smoothed over in time for Dubya to win the Republican presidential nomination. SCI later paid compensation of $US100 million to its victims’ relatives.

And who fixed this? Why, none other than Harry Whittington, the Texas lawyer shot by Deadeye Dick Cheney on that famous hunting trip in February.

Don’t stop there, Mike. Two more paragraphs and you’ll have proof that the Bush twins detonated the World Trade Center.

Rescuers have spoken to two miners trapped underground for five days at the Beaconsfield mine in Tasmania’s north ... West Tamar Mayor Barry Easther says the mine manager has confirmed the men are alive and have spoken with rescuers.

UPDATE II. A timeline of the mine collapse and subsequent rescue work. Which is a long way from over, and extremely dangerous itself; remember that the rescuers are digging through earth made unstable by a recent quake.

UPDATE III. Contrary to earlier reports, which forecast a likely recovery of the men tomorrow, Ten News has just claimed the miners might be returned to the surface “anytime soon”.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

SOCKED

When it comes to sock puppets, Melbourne artist and academic Ian Haig is one of the sockiest, as Andrew Bolt reports following an email from “Fran Preston”:

As it happens, the first thing I nosed out was that “Fran Preston” was a fake name put on a new Yahoo account registered by ... gosh, Ian Haig.

Hit them links for details. For his services to sockery, Haig has, of course, received a slice of your taxes. Several slices, in fact; a few years ago he scammed $5000 to present his masterful Brain Tumor Helmets with Microwaves. More recently, Haig pulled in $10,000 to develop Futurotica Mk2, “a body of animatronic and electro mechanical sculptures exploring sex and technology.”

KOVCO PUZZLE

Speaking after the formal identification of her son’s body in Sydney, Judy Kovco rejected claims that her son had committed suicide while alone in his barracks in Baghdad, Iraq.

"My son did not die in a room on his own by his own hand,” she said. “That is 100 per cent crap. He died in a room with his mates."

At the Daily Telegraph, Ian McPhedran—with whom I’ve worked, and whose military contacts are exceptional—reports that Kovco was alone at the time he was killed:

The revelation, which contradicts information from the military and the Federal Government, was made by soldiers angered by what they see as a disgraceful cover-up.

Troops in Baghdad said the 25-year-old father of two had been under enormous emotional pressure.

Defence and the Government had said Pte Kovco was in a room with two comrades when he was shot. But a source close to the troops said: “His two mates were in the next room and found him after the shot went off."

The Sydney Morning Herald suggests that soldiers themselves are involved in a cover-up:

Serving soldiers in Iraq have told families and friends back home that Private Kovco was killed while the three soldiers in the barracks were playing a risky game. The troops report that one or two other soldiers were in the room with him when the gun went off and that they had tried to cover up what had happened.

It could take up to six months until a board of inquiry delivers a finding ...

It would be good to think that somewhere in the chain of command, someone will step forward to say “This happened on my watch, and whether or not I personally did anything wrong, I’m responsible. I offer my resignation”. So far, there hasn’t been any sign that anything like this will happen, but there’s still time.

Maybe you should resign your post next time anyone in your university (or any contractor working for your university) makes an error.

UPDATE IV. Lefties who’ve suddenly discovered a new respect for Australia’s military in the wake of Kovco’s death and his bungled return to Australia might recall Mark Latham’s views on our servicemen:

I detest war and the meatheads who volunteer to kill other human beings.

Would’ve been interesting to see Prime Minister Latham’s handling of this.

Right now I’d like to see a report of the Iraqi people who Private Kovco, in his capacity as Guardian Angel of Baghdad, took careful aim at and ended their lives ... This story may not be that of an accidental death of a saint. To some it may already appear to be one of a hired murderer encountering karma.

“We" are melting glaciers. Polar bears are drowning. Great sheets of polar ice threaten to raise sea levels by 20 feet. Species are being exterminated wholesale. Acid seas threaten to dissolve shellfish. And, most grandiosely, “We are ... altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe.”

RICH SOAKED

New IRS statistics on the taxes Americans pay show that George Bush’s tax policies actually soak the rich.

It turns out that the income tax burden has substantially shifted onto the wealthy. The percentage of federal income taxes paid by those who make more than $200,000 a year has actually risen from 41% to 47% in recent years.

In other words, the richest 3 out of 100 Americans are now paying close to the same amount in income taxes as the other 97% of workers combined.

It’s also a common myth that the rich are hording all the wealth, while the middle class stays stuck in economic quicksand.

The IRS data show that the share of all income earned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans has actually fallen since 2001. The rich are earning less of the total income but paying more of the total taxes.

UN IGNORED

Iran has ignored a UN Security Council call to suspend all nuclear fuel enrichment, a report by the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has concluded.

Mohamed ElBaradei’s report said that Tehran had done little to answer questions over its nuclear intentions.

The UN wants the research halted amid Western fears - denied by Iran - that Tehran might develop nuclear weapons.

US Ambassador John Bolton said he would now push for Iran to face mandatory UN demands to stop its nuclear work.

There exists the faint possibility that Iran may not comply with any UN demands. What then, UN? Will a scowling be launched? Going to back up your demands with some smashmouth finger-waving? Could it be time for Kofi’s expression of deep concern, outlawed under the Geneva Convention because of the paralysing giggling fits it induces?